Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Paul’s Bribery
Acts Chapter 11 is just so many details and so most readers scan over it lightly, but there is, at the very end of the Chapter, some info that is critical to place in context.
Chapter 11 is about of equal distance between Chapters 9, where we are regaled with amusing story that Paul changes his murderous and conniving life because he fell off his horse, and Chapter 15 where Peter petitions James to give Paul a Limited Franchise Letter to establish a Gentile Branch of The Church. To understand why these Apostles would so honor the Murderer and Persecutor of Christ and Christians, we need to look between these Chapters 9 and 15 to discern what happened.
Turn to Chapter 11 and we find that Paul collected up money from all Greek Ionia and carried it down to Jerusalem himself and plopped it on Peter’s desk.
In a perfect world we would suppose that money would not buy influence. But what does the Book of Acts tell us about Peter? At the end of Chapter 4 we find that Barnabas whetted the monetary appetite of Peter by selling off his entire estate and giving the money over to Peter. Then, Chapter 5, the very next page, we find that Peter had grown arrogant enough to expect that total confiscation should be the norm in Christian Charity. When Ananias and Sapphira were pressured to sell their entire estate and hand the money over to Peter, Peter discovered that they had held back a small fraction that they thought was too slight to notice. But Peter was apparently of the temperament to notice small amounts of money, and had the couple murdered for holding out.
Now, consider. Up to this point the Church had never committed violence against a member. This was virtually the Cain and Able episode for the Church. The Church had lost its innocence. It must have been widely spoken of. And the act was probably seen to be widely unpopular. The Community of Pharisees which had apparently felt it necessary to back off and allow the Church to establish itself and grow, now, after Peter began his Reign of Terror, felt justified in instigating its Persecutions of the Church, which would bring Paul to fame. Paul, hearing the same gossip as everybody else, would well remember Peter’s explicit weakness – that he would kill for money.
So, when people claim that Paul is equal to God, it is only right that they should remember that Scripture itself puts Paul’s career into a more correct context.
Acts Chapter 11 is just so many details and so most readers scan over it lightly, but there is, at the very end of the Chapter, some info that is critical to place in context.
Chapter 11 is about of equal distance between Chapters 9, where we are regaled with amusing story that Paul changes his murderous and conniving life because he fell off his horse, and Chapter 15 where Peter petitions James to give Paul a Limited Franchise Letter to establish a Gentile Branch of The Church. To understand why these Apostles would so honor the Murderer and Persecutor of Christ and Christians, we need to look between these Chapters 9 and 15 to discern what happened.
Turn to Chapter 11 and we find that Paul collected up money from all Greek Ionia and carried it down to Jerusalem himself and plopped it on Peter’s desk.
In a perfect world we would suppose that money would not buy influence. But what does the Book of Acts tell us about Peter? At the end of Chapter 4 we find that Barnabas whetted the monetary appetite of Peter by selling off his entire estate and giving the money over to Peter. Then, Chapter 5, the very next page, we find that Peter had grown arrogant enough to expect that total confiscation should be the norm in Christian Charity. When Ananias and Sapphira were pressured to sell their entire estate and hand the money over to Peter, Peter discovered that they had held back a small fraction that they thought was too slight to notice. But Peter was apparently of the temperament to notice small amounts of money, and had the couple murdered for holding out.
Now, consider. Up to this point the Church had never committed violence against a member. This was virtually the Cain and Able episode for the Church. The Church had lost its innocence. It must have been widely spoken of. And the act was probably seen to be widely unpopular. The Community of Pharisees which had apparently felt it necessary to back off and allow the Church to establish itself and grow, now, after Peter began his Reign of Terror, felt justified in instigating its Persecutions of the Church, which would bring Paul to fame. Paul, hearing the same gossip as everybody else, would well remember Peter’s explicit weakness – that he would kill for money.
So, when people claim that Paul is equal to God, it is only right that they should remember that Scripture itself puts Paul’s career into a more correct context.
